The MyCrypto products you know and love are not going away. MyCrypto users do not need to take any action.
MyCrypto joining MetaMask simply means we’ll be working together to deliver the robust, user-focused products you’ve come to expect from both companies independently.
Combining our efforts allows us to better serve you across the web, in your browser, on your phone, on an airgapped machine, and wherever else the future may take us.
The Web3 Wallet
We’ve been building a wallet for over five years now and I still have trouble explaining exactly what the wallet is in this new frontier. I still fall back to, “you know, it’s like the leather thing in your pocket, and everything inside it, you know, the coins, the credit cards, your ID....” before I trail off like the wallet expert I am. 😬
On the surface, the analogy works, at least maybe historically, seeing as historically your interactions with a blockchain were limited to sending coins from Wallet A to Wallet B. But what started as an inept analogy on a shaky ground completely crumbled as soon as the Ethereum ecosystem exploded in popularity and the complexity of on-chain interactions expanded exponentially.
Over the course of a few very short years, builders transformed ideas into code, which evolved into Githubs full of contracts and audits, and then became usable products, and adjacent products, and more products, until they turned into fully-developed platforms that spun up new pieces on demand and began interacting with other platforms to form a tangled, expansive, interoperable, beast that stretched from Ethereum, across bridges, to other EVM networks, across more bridges, onto L2s, and rolled back up onto Ethereum again.
When you send a transaction today, you could be met with a swift ”Out of Gas,” or you could trigger a cascade of interactions across chains and cities, impacting the balances of wallets, liquidity pools, treasuries, and ultimately the emotional and financial well-being of any number of humans around the globe, represented on the network by miniature, digital works of art that are part of a slightly less tangled system of contracts that stretch across these very same networks.
And your wallet is how you access all of it. It’s how you buy art, how you see your staked assets grow, and how you help decide the future of the decentralized platforms you use. It gives you authority over your more tangible coins and increasingly ephemeral aspects of your life and identity, like access and reputation.
Most every one of these interactions can be traced back to, essentially, the same cryptographic signing process. And behind each signature is a unique individual, with their own complex and unknowable motivations, who will be affected in various complex and unknowable ways, using a wallet to transform their desires into a string of numbers and letters to be sent to the network.
And behind each wallet is a team of people who want nothing more than to build something that empowers people to successfully interact with all of that in an easy, safe, and enjoyable way.
In part, building the perfect wallet is building a perfectly secure, perfectly usable, perfectly safe, perfectly beautiful, perfectly educational product for unknown future people who want to do an infinite amount of unknown future things with an infinite number of unknown future platforms on an infinite number of unknown future networks.
The other part is realizing that the wallet is fundamental to the success of people, developers, products, platforms and networks in this new frontier. Without the wallet, networks would have no transactions to reach consensus around. Without the wallet, platforms and products would have no one interacting with them. Without the wallet, you would be unable to access your digital authority or harness your power as a self-sovereign participant of the new world.
So…What Does This All Mean?
MetaMask and MyCrypto have been building and dreaming in parallel, now we’ll be building and dreaming in lockstep!
We have a lot of work to do if we are to successfully empower the full range of people who are here today and will arrive tomorrow. It's no easy task, especially with the crypto market cycles lulling you into submission one day and throwing millions of new people at you the next.
As both a participant in this ecosystem who wants Web3 to reach its promised potential and leading a dedicated team of builders, it became obvious that joining forces with MetaMask was the best choice for all parties. Mostly, it would enable us to better serve this ecosystem.
This industry has the potential but we aren't there yet. Similarly, MyCrypto isn't there yet and MetaMask isn't there yet.
Dan and Aaron have always been more technical. I have always been less technical. I am excited to watch my engineers grow and thrive with real, technical leadership.
I am also excited for Harry, who has already been working unofficially but directly with MetaMask since July 2017, on their anti-phishing features, be in an environment that gives him the opportunity to expand his skills, serve a larger user base directly, and give him a whole slew of wonderful new experiences.
I am personally thrilled to work with Jordan to build an in-house marketing/community/developer relations team within MetaMask. I have heard some rumors, that you all want easier and more direct access to MetaMask folks and, well, that’s near the top of our list. Right alongside getting more useful resources for all the amazing dapp developers in this space. You all deploy your passion, spend your time, and utilize your resources to craft products, attract users to that product, and then you choose to send them to MetaMask. We can do more to support you.
Dan is probably equally excited to never have to go back and forth on the exact wording of a tweet with ConsenSys ever again. There's so much more than that, but…I should probably stop there. :)
What do you need to do right now?
- Your experience will not be changing any time soon.
- The MyCrypto products that you know and love will work exactly the same.
- There is no action that you need to take as a user of MyCrypto nor as a user of MetaMask.
What does the future hold?
In the short term, we’re focused on bringing two separate teams together to create a solid, unified team. We have no desire to rebrand or merge Githubs in the very short term.
We want to create an environment conducive to shipping amazing features and ship amazing features.
We are looking forward to making a larger impact that we can to the most users possible. This means making a slough of small, iterative changes to the MetaMask and MyCrypto experiences that you’ve been requesting for a long time - things like UX improvements, network handling, error messages, and… dark mode. 😎
In the longer term, we strive to evolve into a comprehensive, Ethereum-first suite of open-source, non-custodial product offerings across every platform that:
- Provides a superior way to access the unique applications and tokens across multiple accounts, protocols, and networks.
- Becomes increasingly decentralized and trustless while instilling more confidence in people over time.
- Empowers people to consent to the financial and social systems they choose to be a part of and access the unique opportunities only found in crypto-land.
- Reaches across all platforms - desktop, mobile, web, and extension - to result in a complete end-to-end experience.
- Prioritizes security and the safety of users above all else.
Over time, MyCrypto and MetaMask’s products will slowly merge over time and interact much more seamlessly with one another.
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Thank you.
To each and every person who has supported us, whether you've been here since day one or just arrived yesterday: we are deeply grateful for the opportunity you have given us thus far and even more grateful for the chance to continue on our mission to build this future with you. Thank you. 💖
If you have any feedback, questions, comments, concerns, advice, complaints, or wisdom to share for this next leg of our journey, find us and reach out to us:
For press, please email press@mycrypto.com.
To unknowable infinities and beyond. 🦊💙
